Tinyvilization is a game where you plan a strategy to conquer a new tiny world. Unfortunatly you are not alone and an other settler will try to build cities over the world. The concept is inspired by the facebook game “Survivium” : you make an instruction list which is executed by your “unit” (a virus in Survivium, a settler in this game), and you watch how efficient (or not) your strategy is against another strategy in miror. Then ajust your strategy or find harder opponents !

I first wanted this game to be connected to a server so that player can send his strategies and fight against other players strategies and have a leaderboard. Finally I just had time to implement an Import/Export system which allow player to share a “strategy code”. Some strategy codes are exposed in my guide to build effective strategies  to help player learn to play with great strategies.

I planned a bit to much, but I could land on my feet and have what I wanted in time : overall, I have a fully playable game which allow asynchron players interactions that is graphically descent and really enjoyable once you know how to build a strategy.

Oh by the way, I did a timelapse !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc-4xiPKzaM

I’ve done at least 4 48h compos. Maybe 5? This time I wanted to work with my longtime collaborator who is an artist, and another friend who is in school for composition. That naturally means doing the jam. Lo and behold, the jam gets an extra day. I think our game is pretty good, but who am I to waste the time I’m given? Going to spend a couple of hours today making some tweaks, and I think Seth (the artist) will likely add some more art touches. I’ve got work today but what else will I do on the train ride?

Also, 1100+ games: awesome. Sweet work, guys.

I’ve known about Ludum Dare for a few years now, but every time it came around I would end up having too much to do in real life to participate. This time I was finally able to get involved, and it was one of the best things I’ve done in a long time, resulting in Humphrey’s Tiny Adventure, a point-and-click adventure game.  Here are a few lessons I learned along the way.

Do as little brainstorming as possible

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to make an adventure game. At 9:00 PM the first day, the theme was revealed and we were able to get started. I spent 15 minutes sketching out some basic ideas and then got right to work. Not everything I wrote down made it into the final game, but it allowed me to get started quickly and add details as I went along, instead of trying to develop a complete design doc or storyline.

Get all your tools and libraries ready to go beforehand

This is a bit of a no-brainer, but I thought it was worth mentioning For this project I used FlashDevelop for my IDE, Inkscape for graphics and Chronolapse for screencasting. Since all three of those are necessary to get started, it wouldn’t do to have some programs downloading after the compo officially started.

Pick an art style that you can produce quickly

I’m mainly a programmer, and while I am capable of creating some reasonably impressive vector art, I certainly can’t pump out high-quality assets fast enough to make it a viable option for a game jam. I decided on an art style that consisted only of colored rectangles, which allowed me to keep my art simple, uncomplicated, and abstract enough that realism wasn’t a concern.

Use release-quality art early on

Chances are if I started out using placeholder art I would just continue using it until I ran out of time. Creating final art assets in the beginning helped me have a feel for how much work it would be to bring the project to completion.

Use version control

If you aren’t using version control already, start now. The first thing I do when I start a new project is create a new local Mercurial repository, and it’s saved me many times in the past. Using version control can save you if you mess up your project too badly, or retrieve old versions of your files if you decide that the first iteration of your player class is the better one.

Record a screencast

Keeping a video running of my work helped to keep me from getting distracted. If I wanted to update my progress on twitter, I had to open up Chronolapse and pause the capture, and even that small amount of required action was enough to keep me from constantly tabbing over to check my email.

Take breaks and get enough sleep

Whenever I came across a tough problem or design decision, I got in the habit of getting up from the computer and making myself a hot cup of tea. As much as it might seem like it’s necessary to spend the entire 48 hours in your computer, the best thing you can do for yourself is to take it easy. If you overwork your brain you won’t be able to think clearly and therefore won’t be as productive as you could be.

I think that’s about it! I had a blast participating, and I’m definitely planning on doing it again.

Tags: flashpunk, SuccessStory

At least, from the outside. I have just over six hours to go before the submission deadline, and all I have is a moving, animated player in a level. Still, it’s not too bad – The only things I need to implement to call this a ‘game’ are jumping and level collisions, then maybe toss in some randomly-positioned collectables and a scoreboard. Certainly not the grand platformer I thought I would make, but it’ll do.

Nearly all the time I’ve spent in this competition is coding the engine… and I regret not doing it before the event started. Someone using Game Maker could do in 10 minutes what it’s taken me 17 hours to do, but I don’t care. If I’m after something to show off as a portfolio piece, then a half-decent engine will look better than a quick design in an existing one (I am a coder, after all). In the past few hours I’ve coded a full input, event and entity system, and I can use this for my next project.

Despite how much I suck, I promise I’ll get you guys something to play. With so many submissions already, I don’t want to be a failure.

Ok I didnt know we must put the source in download, sorry ! It is now ! I coded in ActionScript3 in different classes, so in the archive you find three .as files.

Electron Cloud !

I finished my game for the compo yesterday. It’s called “Stampede at Crooked Thorax Ranch”. I had a really great time making it! I’d love to get some feedback and votes on it here!

Here’s a little postmortem…

About the game:

The game is Stampede at Crooked Thorax Ranch. In it you play a cowboy the size of an insect who is caught in a stampede of wild beetles. The original concept I had was for some kind of tower defense game which involved tiny creeps the size of a pixel that were hard to see but easy to kill. Those pixels would grow as they approached you becoming easier to see and harder to kill. In envisioned a top down view of a mountain with ants climbing up the sides. Since that didn’t quite seem in keeping with Tiny World, I decided to  switch to a magnifying glass metaphor (Unfortunately, I never got around to showing the glasses coming into frame which I think would have helped the player visualize them.) I combined that concept with another idea I had for cowboys riding bugs. The result was beetles that crawl towards a cowboy all viewed under a stack magnifying glasses.

What worked:

• FlashPunk. It was my first time using the engine. I really like the style of FlashPunk’s approach. It seems much more structured that Flixel to me.
•  I tried my best to focus on aspects of the production that would make the game feel like a complete game. I tried to fix all bugs as I went along so I would always be ready to launch. Even though there are things I would like to tweak or improve on, I succeeded in making a complete game.
• Schedule. I spent friday night devoted strictly to coming up with ideas and doing sketches. Then I got a good night’s sleep and started coding Saturday morning. Sunday was mostly spent going down a prioritized todo list of things that would make the game feel more like a game. The game may not have been as complete as it might have been if I had stayed up that whole time but the pace kept my head clear and I was never burned-out. I also got some exercise and took some meal breaks and that helped me not get bogged down.
• I included Google Analytics to track points in the gameplay such as player’s score and how many times they hit replay. This was very easy to do and I look forward to seeing the results!
• I added the story / intro at the last minute because it felt like it wasn’t clear what was happening. I’m not sure how much clearer it is now but I think it added a lot. Next time I think I would start with the story.

What didn’t work:

• I spent too much time putting polish on things when I should have been focusing a little more on making the game elements work. As a result, I had some pieces that look very detailed and some that are very slapdash.
• Digital paintings look crappy as sprites. Purple laser explosions look like peonies. You can barely tell there’s a cowboy riding a beetle. In other words, I am starting to see why people go for 8-bit style art.
• I tried to make an intro in the Flash authoring tool and combine it with the FlashPunk code (done in FlashBuilder). I usually stay away from the timeline but I wanted it done fast. I ended up having a bunch of problems.
• Unpreparedness. I tried to get my environment prepared but there were a few tools I was using for the first time or that I hadn’t used for a long time.
• Tweeting and blogging during contest hours. I should have saved all that stuff for afterwards.

Tags: postmortem

Its been 17, almost 18 hours since I have submitted my game for judging. I must say Its been a whirlwind weekend, staring at the same room for 48 hours, listening to the same songs over and over again. All while try to create a game based on a theme that I downvoted twice! And to make matters worse I ran out of BACON! But I did it, I complete my game within the 48 time limit. I will try to recall the past 48 hours in as much detail as I can rememeber.

Friday – April 20th, 2012 – 5:30pm

I arrive home from work, feeling really good about doing the Ludum Dare tonight.

Friday – April 20th, 2012 – between 6 – 6:30pm

After changing out of my work clothes into something comfortable and milling around the house, I sit infront of my PC at play Legends of Grimrock, while waiting for my TV shows to
start.

Friday – April 20th, 2012 – 8pm

I stop playing and go watch some tv, while watching the IRC chat on my phone. Yes I have an app for that…

Friday – April 20th, 2012 – 9pm

The theme is announced! Tiny World! Tiny World? What the heck and I going to create with that theme?

Friday – April 20th, 2012 – 9pm – 11pm

Finish watching my last TV show and start thinking about a game to create with this Theme. After some thought, I come up with what I believe to be a good game concept. Let me give you the premise.

I decided to do a vertical shooter, with enemies that shoot back at you, huge bosses, power-ups and rockin’ music. Hey we can all dream right But we’ll get into that in a few minutes

Friday – April 20th, 2012 – 11pm – 1/1:30am

With my idea fleshed out on the whiteboard I begin with the art. Once it is compeleted I head to bed to begin coding early Saturday Morning

Saturday – Sunday night around 8ish pm

This is mostly a blur of coding, failures, rethinking, more coding, successes, more coding, tweaking, optimizing, some sleeping and finally a complete game!

So that was my weekend, how was yours

Now we come to the part of the Post Mortem where I tell you what went right, what went wrong, what I learned and what I’ll do better next time. So without further ado, play that funky music white boy!

What went right:

1. thought up what I believe to be a great idea for a game based on the theme. At first I didn’t like the theme, but this was a snap judgement. Once I really sat down and thought about it, I thought of all sorts of great ideas. I do have to say I found thinking up a theme for this LD was a lot easier than the last one (LD22).

2. Since I had a really good idea of the direction I wanted to go, the Art flowed much easier. Usually I have a hard time with the art as I’m not artistically inclined.

3. With only a few setback (to be explained below) coding was pretty much a breeze. Hey when in doubt, make a boolean

What went wrong:

1. Remember when I said this “I decided to do a vertical shooter, with enemies that shoot back at you, huge bosses, power-ups and rockin’ music.” Umm… yeah this didn’t happen. I had issues with collisions while the map was scrolling. Issues getting the enemies to shoot, issues getting the bosses to shoot, no power up and sub par (at least for me) music.

2. Hmm, I guess those are all the problems I had. Oh yeah, one more thing… I ran out of Bacon.

What I learned:

1. I’ve used Flixel for a little over a year now, but I have to say I’ve never created anything so indepth as the game I created this weekend. I learned a ton about this framework and about FlxGroups in general that I never knew before.

2. I learned I need a refresher in math. Might have to hit up Khan Academy in the future.

3. I learned a lot about game design, about how adding small effects can really bring your game up a notch or two graphically.

What I’ll do better next time:

1. I’m thinking about creating a bunch of functions for things I may want to do in future games.

2. I need to gain some more knowledge in game design

3. I’d like to get better at pixel art, like pick up some tips or tricks to make my art stand out.

Well that’s it. Another stress-filled, fun-tastic, 48hr coding jamboree completed. Can’t wait for LD24! Before I close this Post Mortem, I want to give a big round of applause to all the people who coded a game this weekend for the Compo and to those people who coded/are still coding a game for the Jam! These games didn’t exist 48 hours ago and for no more than bragging right, we all decided it would be fun to create a game based on a theme chosen by the community this weekend! Simply WOW!

-KunoNoOni

Tags: compo, final, flash, Flixel, game, ld23, post-mortem, postmortem

HATE ON LITTLE ROUND WORLDS
—

Until today I didn’t even know such a genre of game existed, little round planet games. Today I learned and at first I thought it was innovative… then I played 3,000 games about little round worlds. I wish I was in-the-know about the culture behind these themes.

Last competition platformers bit the big one, this one it’s little ROUND shooters.

It’s was hard but it was good.

My first time on a Ludum Dare’s challenge and it was really fun, motivating and based on molten brain and coffee in the veins !

I ddin’t have the time to create a timelapse but i took some photos to share some of my (french) reflections on paper.
For the Tiny World theme, i made a point&click game with the Adventure Game Studio software and it was pretty hard because i’m not a programmer and i learned the software and some programming skills at the same time i created the game. To say it, i wrote my first variables this week-end.

This challenge was a great was to test creativity in extreme conditions.I had to make concessions on the plot, the graphics and some gameplay mechanics but I’m pretty happy that I managed to do for my first time !

So, there is some photos :

Find my game here, I hope you like what i made !

So here are my timelapses:

Day 1: http://youtu.be/zNWmv5_3iMU
Day 2: http://youtu.be/f82Y9NsI1iw

Hey folks,

I’m glad I dedicated some time for this competition. It’s the first I tried out and certainly won’t be the last.

After about 3 hours of solo brainstorm I finally got the idea of putting together the 7 wonders in a “Tiny World” and design a puzzle/adventure for each one of them.

I got the Wonders directly from Google Sketch Up and statues from Archive3d to be revealed as an award each time the player solves the puzzle.

I’m glad i used Unity to put it all together! No way i could finish all the 7 wonders and still be able to publish in time with the same visual result:

I still didn’t manage to put some sounds and music to it due the lack of time.

I guess I should have inserted more hints in the game in order to guide the player, too, but, whatever… lesson learned!

It took me about 10 minutes to reveal all the 7 wonders, how long did you take? 😉

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12120

I found out that having a day in the weekend feeling like …. broken doesn’t help the contest spirit.

But i did manage to get a lot of things done and still working on perfecting the last bits before I declare it “Complete”

Next time, hope not to be sick in the next Ludum Dare weekend so I can effectivly work on things.

A great thanks go out to:

* Valesse (For the help with the logo’s)

* RISGaming (For the help with all the artwork that I “made bad”)

I was all pumped to use my custom engine for this LD but none of my concepts lined up with the feature set that I had built. So in a scramble I went with Unity and it worked out pretty well. I used the Photoshop plugin Lunar Cell to generate the planet textures, and Spacescape to generate the skybox for my entry.

Using rigid bodies for space entities worked out really well, and liberally applying ribbon trails to everything gave object movement a nice look.

There’s a lot that I wanted to do with this concept but at least I nailed the bigger hit list items. I hope at least one person enjoys playing this as much as I did making it

my entry – Planetship

This was my first ludum dare, but I’ll definitely do it again next time.

comments like: “The kind of game you can play during 20minutes without noticing.”
are the kind of things you would put on the back of the box.

Thank you all!

By the way, the current record (among my friends and I) is a combo of 10

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12316

 after only 20 points!

Play Burning Platform on your Android device!

So, when I was writing this game I’d completely forgotten that a person using a Nook Color could install the apk and play it. It was only when one of the folks in IRC asked if he could have a direct link to the apk because he lacked access to Google Play did I remember it was even possible. So here it is:

The Nook Color presents challenges for many developers due to its performance profile. So how does Burning Platform fare here? Really well, actually! The framerate and animation was butter smooth even with hundreds of moving objects flying around. The one thing it did not do well however is play my SFX. The music was fine, but the device refused to play any other sound files. Go figure!

If enough people out there are on Nook, or otherwise are unable to access Google Play, I’ll make the apk available publicly on my website. Let me know in the comments if you are on a device without Google access!

Since yesterday, but due to circumstances (it being late, having class in the morning today, etc) I’m only writing this post now!

Play it here! =D

This game is about a tiny little creature that is hungry, and only one thing will ease his suffering: eating that delicious yummy.
And did I mention that when you eat things… you get bigger? =D

The game ended begin much shorter and incomplete than expected… but I’ll do a post mortem version, which will surely have enemies!
Also, I’m planing to do something like a puzzle (e.g., having the right size to pass through passages)… though I’ll think more about it.

I’ll probably write a post mortem talking about how my LD went… but later! Now I have games to play! =D
(and there are a lot of games this time!!!! =D)

I’m sorry for writing so much on the last post, I was in dire need of sleep but wanted to put it all out before I went to bed. Also, if you haven’t checked out my entry, here is a link.

I saw other posts and decided to list the successes, failures and lessons of my weekend!

Successes

• Managed to finish the entry in time for the compo;
• Core idea developed based on the proposed theme;
• Made everything with a “low” level API (Java 2D API).

Failures

• Couldn’t add all the fancy features I wanted in time;
• Gameplay is too simple;
• Wanted to make 4 small levels but ended up making only one (too large);
• Most of the available time spent on making the basic graphics and platformer engines, too little time spent on actually designing the game;
• Completely messed up the code (which was somewhat organized) on the last couple hours by adding game data to it since I wouldn’t have time make a xml loader or something.

Lessons learned

• The need to code the basic graphics and platformer engines took valuable time that could have been spent on designing the game and developing different ideas and art for the game. Next time I shall use a decent previously published code base or engine so I can focus on the creative part (which I guess is the whole point of making games, right?);
• I was caught off guard by the proposed theme. Next time I shall prepare for all the ones on the final round, mainly the ones I don’t like or don’t expect to win the voting.

Bonus! Features I wanted to add but had no time to

• Space ship crashed with smoke rising on the start of the game (which would explain how the character ended up at the tiny world);
• Background color changing with player advancing through the level;
• More villages, buildings, tiny persons and dialog lines;
• 4 levels: desert, forest, cave and complex;
• Tiny persons moving on the landscape, falling into holes and doing silly dances;
• Y axis exploration: less linear landscape;
• Hidden amber stones as a bonus motivation for exploration;
• Achievements: talk to all the tiny persons, finish the game, get all the amber stones.

And that’s it! If I remember something later I’ll add here on this post.

I want to thank all the Ludum Dare community for this great thing we have here! And I’m so happy to be part of it as a competitor now, since I only spectated for a few editions. Thank you all, competitors, jammers, spectators, organizers! You are awesome! =)

Can’t wait for August!

Time for bed – got work tomorrow.  Here’s my game.

Small World (PC and Mac)

It’s a 3d shooter set way down below at a microscopic level.  Will post more later, must sleep.

Tip for the start of the game :  Start blasting early!!!

Dev notes:

Game was written in LUA, with the ShiVa game engine.  Graphics were from The Game Creators default pack (The Colonel – main player) and the Scientist from the Modern 2 pack.

I created the terrain using Lightwave with a displacement map.

I modelled the laser bolt, spiker and the dust mite in Lightwave (the latter two using Nurbs and then froze them), and crunched them down using qemLoss3.

Sound effects were from my Turbo Flick game (on the App Store) and partially remixed using Audacity.  The sounds were original generated from SFXR.

The fresnel shader was built as part of the advanced material properties of ShiVa but it required that I tweak it a little to come up with the final effect.  Most objects also combine a normal map to add the fine detail.  I generated some normal maps from Lightwave using the Normal Map creator.  This works by having a hires mesh, a lo-res game ready mesh, then adding a UV map to the low res object, with the normal sourced from the hires model, but rendered on the lores UV map.

I also add a top down light and shadow, with focus set to a short depth of field to mimic the look of an electron microscope.

Any remaining 2D graphics were created using Corel, like the title and icon.

Here’s the first concept sketch I did on day one before I started creating the game, to get a feel for the lighting.

I hope you enjoy my entry, but also try the bug fixed version below. However that one below is not part of the submission, so judge the one above first, then try the update below.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Post entry notes:  I’ve done a bug fix to make the game funner to play – like you don’t get spammed by the spikies as much.  If you’re playing the original submission just hold the back key and you will respawn back away from the bag guys once the dying sequences is complete.  But if you wanna try the game version that’s a bit tamer (please don’t judge this version below as part of Ludum Dare – that would be unfair) – then try the links below.

PC version

http://drewfx.com/ludumdare/SmallWorld-1.4.0.zip

Mac Version

http://drewfx.com/ludumdare/SmallWorld_1_4_0_Mac.zip

Yo, I posted this before the prizes got so big, so now I’m posting it again. Stuff’s been getting pretty crazy.
You can find out all the details at 64digits.com. It starts on 1st May and lasts until 1st August.

We’re hosting an RPG theme game making competition, cunningly called RPG Four Digits.

…that might sound like a fairly random name, but it is the latest in a series of competitions with more fortunate names (eg Scary Four Digits for halloween, Sixty Fools Digits for April Fools). To make things even more confusing, 64digits is building an RPG into the site called 64RPG. But let’s not get into that…

The competition is three months long, to fully do the theme justice (we usually do month-long ones, a bit like another game contest you may have heard of). There are prizes, which are subject to further donations/sponsorships, so do check back if you think the reward is unsubstantial. And don’t worry, everything is completely non-profit on our end. Prizes are donated by members. We just like games. A lot.

That’s it from me then. Feel free to point out all of the innumerable ways in which we are inferior to the all-powerful Ludum Dare.
Linky

On and play my Ludum Dare compo entry!
Other linky

Job done, this is the result of our mixed twisted minds:

The story of the most awesome goldfish ever! Play our game 😉

This week end was extremely nice, we’re proud of our baby, as it’s our first Ludum.

Can’t wait to test a lot of cool games !

Tomorrow, we’re going to have such a hungover…

As a bonus: Some crazy used and unused music samples from the game

Tags: first-timer, flashpunk

My sadly fail on my first LD. But I should think positive. Others only need to waste 40 seconds of their life to test my game 😀

Also you can be impressed by this nearly complete game engine with an unfinished game. Now It’s time to sleep. My eyes hurt….

Play Tinysoft here.

Yesterday I finally managed to finish my game “Tiny War Of The Worlds”. I was too tired to post about it yesterday so I’m going to do this today!

This game is one of the best games I ever created on Ludum Dare. It’s very  fun and addictive and even I played it for some hours just for fun.

One of the great features of the game is the upgrade menu, this menu is the whole point of the game. Some may go on an offensive way while the others will choose to go on the defensive way or even mix them toghether! That’s all the fun Do it your way!

I’m very proud of my result, I had a very busy weekend and I used every minute of programming to complete the whole game.

I’m so happy that we managed to pass the 1,000 games record, we’ve got some really cool games out there! Happy Birthday Ludum Dare! Well done

You can play Tiny War Of The Worlds right here!

Tags: final, screenshot

We’re so close, just adding an ending 😛

This was my first time participating in Ludum Dare, and it was an awesome and fun experience. 😀 I wasn’t aware of that I was able to get so much work done in that short amount of time!

Here’s the game:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11939

And here’s the timelapse:
http://youtu.be/-72jelVP6T4?hd=1

Tags: timelapse

Wow!! This was my first Ludum Dare and it was quite challenging!

I tried to do an arcade survival game based on tiny world theme.

I’m glad because after some levels, a kind of pacman’s gameplay has emerged and add to the original idea.

I hope you will like it 😀

Right

– The warmup phase made me ready as it needed

– Time management was hard because of personal life activities but I managed to get 22 hours to develop

– Full game released (even if I have a lot more ideas^^)

Wrong

– A littre more time needed to make animations and hud

– 1 bug which can sometimes block player I needed to fix after release

– Really tired (in France event ends at 3am, not optimal for day work ;p)

Learned

– Accept to do “bad code” to continue development and release in time

– Really small pixel design

– Ludum Dare is a great event 😀

Please rate it!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11818

I need more time to finish… a lot more…

But, let’s see what can I do in 4 hours…

Play Here

WASD [Move], Left Click [Shoot]

You know what that is? That is OneSeed running – albeit badly – on my IPAD

Watch this space

So, TheFridolin made a game for LD, and I fixed and uploaded it.

You can play it here!

It’s not really advanced gameplay. Many things could be added and improved, but since this is his first Java-game with graphics, he did a nice job!

Anyway, looking forward to next LD ^^

Not googled graphics at all!

I actually finished this yesterday, but I just went straight to bed after posting it.

Anyway, go play it!

Bunny Cube

Dear world. We’ve just made a game. A real, proper game.

O. M. G.

Anyway, it’s about Soviet subs and being mental and stuff. It can even actually be played.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=7122

Here it is! Time Lapse of my LD48 entry:

Unity3D Platformer over 2 days condensed into 15 minutes!

Any comments welcome.

Tiny Galaxy: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11818

Ludum Dare was awesome, and I’ll definitely do it again some time, maybe solo, see how that goes. Our motto for this game was KISS, and that worked beautifully.  I learned how to properly use channels to play music, or sounds. I also learned that the principal at our school plays video games punctuated by random screams. Nick taught me how to properly cap the framerate. I did NOT learn how to use the sprite class properly, but that’s alright, we can just use 20 billion variables instead. (Note: This is an exaggeration) I’m proud of what we accomplished, and I think that all in all, it’s a rather fun game.

I’m not gonna be able to finish it. (But I will continue to work on it) Here

Wow, Ludum Dare was an intense experience for me. My head is only just about recovered now. It was a lot of fun too chatting to people on irc and now there’s so many games to play and review if anyone gets through all 1100+ of them that is true dedication to reviewing as you’ll have played each game for under half an hour and probably not slept for 3 weeks. You insane person out there that actually manages to accomplish this I salute you. Because otherwise I fear you will do terrible, terrible things to me.

Anyhow. Made a game, that works okay, in Unity3D, called Gravity Force 3 – viewable here –> http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=6823

Not the most amazing or unique take on the tiny world theme but it encompassed the lmitied knowledge of unity3d that I had gained before the weekend. some other ideas involved a penguin trying to defend it’s ever shrinking island from flaming hoodlums by kicking ice blocks at them and some other tomfoolery but those didn’t end up being my entry as I figured it was too far beyond the 48 hours of time available.

I think I balanced my time well. thought I’d finished at 11pm GMT on Sunday but noticed some final bugs and my final submission was at 1am. I’m currently adding some more featurse to Gravity Force 3 so it can be played nicely on mobile devices and hope to pubish it onto kongregate and indie city in the future.

Gotta say this Game Jam has been an amazing learning experience for me and I’ve been introduced to some new software for audio creation and I really hope I can enter again in August. Thank you once again to all the people involved in organising ludum Dare, it has re-kindled further my interest in making games which makes me feel great, yay!

Hello ladies and gentlemen,

That’s my entry for LD23. I haven’t had much time thought, a few hours on sunday. Enough talking! Let’s explain!

This is a rocket. A doomed rocket! All the media talks about it, nobody knows whats going on with it!

To play press SPACE as if there is no tomorrow!!

It doesn’t really offer any gameplay, no time to go further. But silly enough…

greetings to all ludumdares! <3

Although I finished this yesterday at the deadline, I’m posting it now because the site isn’t (as) super laggy.

Proudly presenting Wulcan:

Play and rate here!

About

Wulcan my second game made for Ludum Dare! You pilot a space ship through an ever narrowing chasm in space. As the walls slowly close in on you, enemies will also barrage you from above. You ship comes equipped with the Alpha and the Beta guns. The Alpha gun shoots a blue bolt that will destroy enemies. The Beta gun shoots a pink bolt that will cause the walls to push back when it hits an enemy. It’s your job to get as far as possible!

Please read the readme on the download page because there aren’t directions in the game.

Wulcan runs in LÖVE and is written in my own programming language, MoonScript. More about the development process in a later post!

Thanks and enjoy!

Source

Source is hosted on github: https://github.com/leafo/ludum-dare-23

Tags: gif, love2d, moonscript

After almost 72hrs and absolutely no brains left between our ears.. We’re done!

Head on over to our entry’s page and check it out for yourself. We’re damn proud of it! Looking forward to your guy’s feedback & checking out what everyone else has been up to!!

Had a great time making “Ant Slayer”, the shrunken exterminator game, finishing about thirty minutes before the deadline with a critical bug fix in the extra hour they gave us.  Here’s my timelapse:

What Worked:

• Cutting Risks – I experimented with particles and toon-shading, and ended up nixing both with only 30ish minutes lost.  This turned out to be a great decision.  I’ve written both in the past but I try not to look at old code during the compo.
• Familiar Toolset – XNA and my base code libs are what I use most these days so the familiarity meant I could just spew code like a fire-hose and have it come out decent.
• EZMuze – An xbox indie game (though not really a game) that lets you throw together great sounding music in a hurry.  I ran a mini stereo from an optical decoder over to my computer and recorded with audacity.  I literally made those 3 songs in the 2 or 3 minute chunks of time I was waiting for my levels to light.
• TimeLapse – It was my first time doing a timelapse, and I find it super valuable for reflection on the weekend.  Being tired and under the gun, so much of it is forgotten.
• Prep Work – I took several hours before the compo to do a test app, secure a way to do music, stockpile food and tea, practice making a skybox, and work out relative sizes of things.  My game I work on daily uses meters as the base unit, and my ludum libraries use inches, so I wanted to make sure the sizes came out ok.

What Didn’t:

• Bug Chasing – I blew hours chasing a problem with dynamic lighting which ended up being a very simple logic error.  Pix (the xna shader debugger) wasn’t helping matters as it crashes on load for this game for some reason.
• Wheel Re-inventing – I spent a lot of time on basic code that I have to write for every game I make.  Audio stuff comes to mind but also game state and basic menu stuff took hours.  I should have that stuff in library form so I can focus on the gameplay.
• Virtual Machine – I decided to put my art tools in a virtual machine.  I’ve recently reinstalled and have been trying to keep my development machine clean.  This worked for awhile, but as the maps got bigger it became too slow to be practical.  So I lost some time reinstalling some art tools on my main machine.
• Theme Paralysis – In this and the last time around, I failed horribly.  Ordinarily, as with any game designer or even game player, if you utter a single word of english I can come up with a dozen game ideas around it.  This and last time I was completely stumped and had no idea what to work on.  I just started creating and hoped I would think of something.  Eventually I forgot the theme entirely and just started making fps stuff.  Having slept and had a day to reflect I really regret this.  I’m not sure how many of you saw Chris Hecker’s GDC talk about “An appetite for sameness”, but it really struck a chord with me, and yet here I am, making yet another fps.  It’s more painful when you consider the context of the event, a festival of creativity.

Tags: xna

Hey, I hope everyone got some rest after this long weekend !

So I’ve made a game, Gods Inc., you can play it here :

PLAY THE GAME

I’ll write a post mortem about it probably tomorrow and post it here if anyone is interested. Meanwhile I uploaded my timelapse for those two day :

WATCH THE TIMELAPSE

See you later !

Well, I posted an entry, but still think I failed. Ok, maybe not to the LD standards (I made a game), but it feels like a failure.

But why did I fail?

I  like to blame the tools. Like everyone does. But I’m right, partly. Why? Because I didn’t practice all tools enough. LMMS crashed, Blender was annoying, why can’t I rotate this CharacterController and what the hell is a *.3ga file? All because of the same reason: I didn’t practice them, or try them out at all.

But I also feel happy, because it was nice to push myself to make a game in such a short time. Usually when I make something, not a necessarily a game, I usually get a “better” idea I want to make and start focusing on that. Then a week later… well, you know, we all have this problem sometimes, right?

This time I made something that I can expand to something and enjoy doing so. And while doing that I hopefully make something other people might like to play. I was also able to spend some time in making a Shader, and make something that actually works. I improved my skills in a few tools; mostly Blender and LMMS, but also some Unity functions.  I also wrote most code myself, without using default assets like platform character controllers.

So why do I dislike my entry and what do I like?

Dislike

• The game only has one boring short hard-to-understand game element
• The drawing style is inconsistent
• No music
• Only two sound effects
• Some things are obviously rushed (even within a game jame)

Like

• I like the atmosphere
• I have awesome game elements (I will add later)
• I have an awesome story line (I will add later)

In my next post I will add some comments about why I like/dislike my entry

Oh, and if you are still wondering what I’m talking about:

Or play it

Tags: Failure, Siewart

I’m still here!

The cars are driving / falling off the track well enough.

Right now i’m trying to get the car-car collisions to feel right – never easy on a network.

Then i’ll see if i can squeeze in presage’s music and get a lap counter before 6.

I doubt i’ll actually be able to get the start/finish context in.  You’ll have to imagine that on your own

Posted a Linux version video demonstration.

Still doesn’t tell you how to win, but that’s kind of the point.

Tags: derp, haha, herp, linux

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WApkzfTmg5A&feature=youtube_gdata

For our entry – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11315

Thats my first ever Ludum Dare project finished. My friend and I entered to the Jam since we wanted to work as a pair for our first go. It was real good fun and you can check out our entry “Let’s Go Moon” at – Here

Here’s my time-lapse video of the making of Zephyr:

Play Zephyr

Tags: timelapse

A lot of fun, a good team work… Thanks LD  

Try our game Here !

See our (poor) gameplay video here

I finished my game. It’s an adventure. A little too tired to say more right now, except: I’M SO HAPPY.

I was originally aiming to go into the actual competition, but since I realised I could make the game so much better with the extra day, and because this is my first competition entry, I decided to enter the Jam.

Here are some screenshots from my final Beta testing version:

Level Selecter

Title Screen

Well the theme for Ludum Dare 23 was Tiny World and for some reason, early Saturday morning the best I could come up with whilst trying to limit the scope was something based on the the Disney boat ride “It’s a small world“.  Now in retrospect this was probably not the best idea I’ve had for a game.

The concept

If you have been on the ride you will know its a musical ride with a very catchy and incredibly annoying theme song.  The concept was that being driven mad by the song, you have to attack the characters from the ride floating in your mind to reduce the songs volume and return to sanity.  See sounds great at 3:00 am

Have a listen to see what the song sounds like if you have not had chance to experience it.

I also planned to use a mix of images inspired by Mary Blare who actually helped design the rides look.  The “player” would be based on the Lost Souls from Doom.  No idea why I thought this would be good mix.

No idea of how to win really, I guess I just hoped that it would fun to an extent, but was pinning my hopes of the visuals being interesting enough to hold the attention of the player.

The delivery

Well I have very limited time to write code, so have to make use of the night shift when the kids are asleep.  To prevent all hell the next day I force my self to sleep rather than stay up all night with a target of at least 4 hours.  Its just not fair to inflict my grumpyness on the rest of the world for a bad game.  So this gives a very limited amount of time to code in over the weekend.

This coupled with taking on the challenge of Silverlight as a delivery medium resulted in very slow progress with the majority of my time spent fighting my lack of experience with XAML and not creating.  I do like Silverlight as a medium and may use it in future projects.

The audio, which I never actually got to record was to be myself singing/humming the theme tune.  Thankfully for all, I never recorded anything.

The game

I’m not sure I can really call it a game, but due to my lack of momentum and poor concept I threw in the towel early Sunday evening, for both the Compo and the Jam.  If you are still interested you can play/run what I have by clicking the image below:

So what I have I learnt?

• With limited time, stick with a technology that you know.  6-7 hours is not the time to take on something new.
• If the concept is not working, drop it quickly and try something else.

If you want the code, you can find it here: http://blog.codheadz.com/index.php/ludum-dare-23-tiny-world/

Tags: .net, Disney, ld23, Silverlight

My submission isn’t searchable! What gives?

Hey everyone!

How are you faring at your last hours? Did you all come out unscathed?

We are David and Alex (soy_yuma) and we manage to finish our first-jam game which can be played and rated HERE!

Quarks vs Leptons!

How it went

Our team didn’t start exactly well: half the programmers -and that’s out of 2!- were unavailable due to sickness -yeah, go figure- and at some point in the beginning we came close to a food poisoning case, but somehow we did survive, and I daresay the outcome isn’t bad at all for us considering we’re greener than our muons! (inside joke, please play the game!)

Being my first jam, and not a coder myself, I might’ve pushed too far my poor brother, who had to do all coding job himself, but I kept getting too many ideas for gameplay, story and everything, and it was frustrating to push them aside. Moreover, at the end we never skipped the sleep because we both had to work today (thus we’ve lost like 30 totally useful hours) so the game has strived from the original idea a lot. But I guess this is what it is about!

Anyways, it is done, and it is up. Please try it and laugh a bit if you will, either at the physics nerdism (with quarks and leptons all along, please review Quarks and Leptons for more info) or the queer noises, and forgive us for the music, for it was randomly generated.

What went right

The outcome is quite nice, and we are particularly happy with:

• The team logo. We laughed a lot about setting up the apish voices.
• The lore. I was content with how we managed to agree with the idea of quarks and leptons so easily, without quarrels (please note that both of us are physicists), and it all fitted somehow. Curiously enough, it also fits the previous theme (alone) like a glove!
• How it all fitted together. Surprisingly enough, after the first 24h the game was already better than we expected, but once we put the music and sounds and more guns, well, we couldn’t believe it was our work!
• The sounds. Really, it was a mood raiser to use the ipad to record a few sounds and then tune them with Audacity. Totally recommended!

What went wrong

The features that didn’t finally fit in the game due to time issues are the following:

• Start with only a quark of your choice, grab the rest as you progress, and add guns as you go (up to two at the same time). Get hit and lose one randomly -> in-game: have all 6 from the start with all their “guns”
• Obstacles in the level -> in-game: only bottom and top obstacles, all of them with the same form
• Special combos: each of the 15 two-quark combos would have an special attack. For example, the spiral-frontal gun and the drill one could combine into a giga-drill-breaker for uber-epicness -> in-game: no specials
• Ending: you would finally reach the electron after defeating quite an army, and the end cutscene would pop, which I’m not going to spoil -> in-game: sad To Be Continued screen

What we would change

Finally, what we’d change if we ported back to three days ago:

• Get more programmers: one was definitely not enough for a group of two. We came to too many ideas and too little time to set them up. Also, whenever it came to discussing the coding would get paused.
• Invest more time in the set up prior to LD: I lagged a lot finding a proper music randomizer, and then I had to convert the output from midi to mp3…
• Find a way to stop time!

To sum it up… shump! That’s what the game is, your old-school horizontal shoot’em’up, with a few guns and sadly just two types of enemies. There’s a tiny bit of lore, which I hope you also enjoy. Ignore the poetry, it wasn’t really there, and have fun! We certainly did making it

{David and Alex} Cámara

Tags: java, shooter, sismicos, vertical scroll

Quinas Studio finished it’s first Ludum Dare.

Our game is called “A Giant Step”. We tried to address the theme in a different way. We think it’s interesting, and a bit introspective.

A Giant Step

Please play it to the end. Maybe you can find out the twist before you finish the game.

Here’s the poster!

Good Luck to all that are still finishing their game.

Vasco Correia – Quinas Studio

This marked my second Ludum Dare. Last time I had the whole 48 hours and I made a game called Chamber of Remorse, which in my opinion had loads of content and looked gorgeous for being made in only 48 hours.
BUT, this time I was moving on the same weekend as LD, so I was limited on time. I livestreamed the whole thing and according to the VOD’s I used only about 12 out of the 48 given hours, and came up with the following game…


Mini Marauders!

But more importantly… Happy 10th anniversary, and congrats to over 1000 games!

Destroy the corrupted disassemblers before they destroy you.  PURGE THE SYSTEM!  

Click here to play NANOFAULT!

Red, Green, and Blue Dissasemblers are each weak to one type of ammo (Green->Red->Blue->Green)

Switch ammo with the scroll wheel or ‘Q’ and ‘E’ keys. Have fun!

• It’s rather hard!
• There’s a color matching dynamic that’s not documented in the controls
• Ran out of time for lots of animation.
• Only one weapon, only one enemy.
• Would totally do again.
• NO DISASSEMBLE!

VISIT OUR SITE FOR FUTURE UPDATES AND AN ANDROID VERSION!

It’s two hours before our deadline, and by jove, we’ve got something playable!

Driving on some planetary rings, like you do.

Jade is busy adding as many gameplay features as he can before we need to start packaging the game up. Meanwhile, I’ve been adding a few graphical tweaks, like details to the carts.
We were saved at the last minute on music by our talented friend Presage, who kindly gifted us with one of his tracks. Many thanks, dude.

Another peek at what we’ve got:

track in the green part of its color cycle

a view of the planet

And for those of you who might be curious for a closer look at the bumper sticker on ermine’s car:

I decide to give up. Yeah.

This experience was really fun, reading posts about developers worldwide trying to make a game with so many different concepts while I’m doing my own game. Totally awesome.

I learn a lot about the stack I used, Unity + 2d Toolkit and this is gold because I want to create more and more games with this technology.

This was my first Ludum Dare but is not my last, like most of us I want to be a Game Designer and trying to create something from nothing was my first step. The next step probably is create a lot of games, trying the better every time.

I will finish this game for Kongregate, but later, right now I just want to get a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

You can get an idea of what I wanted to do from HERE.

Use WASD for movement, left click to attack and middle click to teleport.

I’m still stunned that i was actually able to complete LD23, I am satisfied about my game, but there were some flaws i will have to point out. The game I created was a Simple Platformer called Block Bros. With not much too do really.

So I decided to use Unity3d well because that’s really simple for me to understand. In Unity3d i used C# as for the graphics i originally was going to use Photoshop for it, until the theme showed up and i switched to Paint.Net for it. The sounds were created by Generators ( SFXR, BFXR )

The Things That Worked:

>>> Familiar Tools – I was sorta familiar with Unity3d and C# which made my programming and compiling the game overall was pretty simple.

>>> Theme – The theme really helped me with my artwork as Pixel Art is for me easy and I spend about 30 minutes creating all the Artwork.

The Thing That Didn’t Work:

>>> LD Familiarity – I was totally familiar with the rules and how it goes. I was able to read the rules, but the only part that confused me was how we cannot use downloadable, but free open-source. I was confused and decided to download some soundtracks for my game, but after reading some more post on this and asking question in IRC i decided to delete and i took at least one hours to find a great soundtrack generator, this was a small set back for me.

>>> Planning – The main plan was a simple platformer. Then it turned into a fighting platformer. Then i totally scratched everything and created a Puzzler Platformer. This was because as I was creating the game more idea came into my head, thus creating conflicts on what should i do, how, and why. It was very confusing and i decided to scrap my previous work and to redo it all over again. This set me back another 2 hours, because i only spent about 15 minutes thinking and drawing the idea/concept.

>>> Level Designs – The level design were created absoluting randomly, none were planned out. After programming everything I put trees there and here and designed it anywhere. This caused confusion and i sometimes had to redo the entire level. This didn’t set me back much, but did unmotivated me.

>>> Messy Folders – all my folders were absolutely a disaster, there was no sense of organization and everything was everywhere. I found sound files in the graphic folders, Scripts not even in the folder, and graphics in the Object folder. The way i named the file made it hard to understand for me. It was just a total mess.

>>> Not Prepared – Okay, this is my fault. I knew i was going to do LD, but i still decided not to even practice at all. I kept telling my self “Gotta practice”, but then my mind when off on it’s own tangent. Sometimes I told myself even while i was participating that “AHH I QUIT!”. It was very unmotivating and tiresome.

————————————————————

Despite all this mishap i’ve have it was actually a VERY fun time, and gives me experience on how i can become a greater game developer. I hope to join the next LD…! Knowing your weaknesses will only make you stronger.

You can view my entry here ->> MY ENTRY <<-

Tags: Heugamer, postmortem

A game by me (Mike, AKA PoV, AKA Sykhronics) and Derek of Halfbot.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=19

Written in C++ and JavaScript (C++ compiled to JS with Emscripten).

I’ll eventually talk about that on my blog.

Here’s a shot:

Also: http://youtu.be/oWk5sJUEaIU

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2012 at 9:42 pm and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

So we finished the game finally. It won’t be a winning entry, it’s average (or below average) at best (and there are a lot of bugs). But it’s our first game ever and everything is written from scratch in c++. So I’m proud.

Ciao guys, and thank you for this amazing contest!

ckaotik and my game – simply named “The Office” – has now been submitted to the jam. Have fun playing and rating, everone, as will we.

A more thorough post with a timelapse and post-mortem will probably follow, but it’s late enough for now, and sleep needs to be had.

The closer we get to the end, the more each millimeter looks like a mile… and the more each minute looks like a second!!!

The nerves of the main programmer are put to the test.

Keep calm and carry on!!!

(Probably better to play it before watching the timelapse – which may contain spoilers).

It took ages to upload this video! I’m glad it’s finally up now. I used Chronolapse to take the screenshots, followed by XVid and Virtualdub for compression.

Post mortem coming next!

Well, my first time participating in an actual Ludum Dare was interesting at least.  I was  just coming back from vacation without internet so I had no idea about the theme or enough battery life in my laptop to get started until Sunday.  A minor setback I suppose.  Hah.  Anyway, I threw around a bunch of ideas, which all resulted in failure, until I came upon the idea for Tiny Archaeologist, which you can play here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8229 Originally the ending was supposed to be a section where you are chased by water, but after two hours that still wasn’t working so I scrapped it and put what is there now.

Anywho, let me start with the theme.  I loved it.  It fit with so many ideas I’ve had floating around my head for a while now so coming up with an idea was easy.  Of course I made up a new one, but that’s besides the point.

Now let me talk about my game.  In my opinion it’s a solid meh.  I think it came out okay, but it could have been way better.  Let me start out on things I liked about it.  Firstly, I liked the idea.  I love games with tiny characters and huge worlds, so it was awesome to be able to make one myself.  I also am moderately pleased with the graphics, while they could have been better, they are some of the better pixel art I’ve done.  One of the best parts of this was I got the opportunity to work with Stencyl 2.0, and this was a really great crash course on some of the new features.

Now for the negative. I spent most of the time on the graphics, but I still don’t think they were varied or bright enough.  They seemed a little dull to me.   The music was just a simple loop, but I didn’t have time.  And putting music always gives me difficulty because of the long process of getting it from pxtone to Stencyl, so the ending got a little chopped off.  The gameplay is barebones and incredibly simplistic.  I wanted to add more, but since I started late, there was no time.

I’ll end this on a positive note: I had a really great time working on this, and I look forward to more LD’s and more games in the future.

Until then, see you,

toaster

Tags: flash, ld23, postmortem, stencyl

Just put an Android version of Miniature Worlds  up for download, for anyone with phones. So far only tested on my galaxy nexus, but should work on most android phones…

Download link on this page: http://mkv25.net/ludum/ld23/preview/

I did want to release on the Android / Google Play store, but I had problems signing with a proper key, so I’ve scrapped that idea for tonight!

Btw, it runs sideways, not like the cropped screenshots ; ) they’re just images I prepared for the store : )

Enjoy!

Wow, I’m beat. That weekend marked my first complete Ludum Dare (and first arguably complete game, too!). I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what to and what not to do for the Compo, and overall had an awesome experience! I’ve put together a timelapse of the creation process below, which I feel is great as I can see all the effort of two days compressed into 5 minutes.

Although a very stressful weekend (the final bout of crunch time in particular springs to mind…), I am relatively happy with what I have created – despite the lack of such critical video game assets as enemies and music. Still, here is the overview:

What Went Right

• I more or less had a plan: I didn’t go in to the design blind expecting things to just happen. Planning out key features and the remaining critical systems helped me to not only prioritise what needed to be done, but also allowed me to see what features weren’t working or could be cut to fit into the time constraints.
• I was very pleased with my art. This was a major confidence boost seeing how well I felt it had turned out, and I felt it motivated me during the final hours so as not to go to waste.
• I was more or less entirely motivated throughout both days.
• I remembered to take the weekend off work. This was single-handedly the most important thing ever.
• Some familiarity with the Stencyl framework helped the coding segments.
• The Ending.

What Went Wrong

• My inexperience at programming severely limited not only the rate at which I could work, but the complexity of the features I could integrate.
• The lack of music really got me down, and ultimately during the last hour I had the choice of whether to favour music or to fix the critical bugs present in the game. I chose the bugs.
• At the 6 hour remaining mark, I completely panicked. The game had a major warp glitch that rendered the game unwinnable (if the game can even be won per se), and I began to panic with 3 rooms still to design – after calming myself (by working) I eventually managed to face the challenges head on. I feel improvements could have been made with this extra time that was wasted.
• I left the music till last. For me, composition is a very time dependant process – if I feel rushed, it falls flat. This should be a Day One task, not one for the last few hours.
• I was not properly managing my time: one animation took over an hour to create – this should never be the case!

This Animation. This is Why.

Changes to consider next time / Advice

• I should become far more familiar with the Stencyl framework to allow myself a fighting chance.
• I’m asking the next LD off work, too. This has been a great experience.
• Better time management.
• More music, created earlier in development.
• I should at least learn how to code enemy behaviour – a key feature that had to be cut during the final two hours.
• I should attempt to achieve the same standard of art (if not better), but I can’t waste time on a single animation like I did here.
• Overall, I just need to be far more prepared.

I feel that if I were to have spent more time on the game, the early mental picture I had of the game would be attainable, perhaps this could serve as a further project? I’d really love to flesh this concept out into a fuller, richer game – and I guess I have all the time in the world to do it! So, why not?

However, I felt a major time killer was that my original idea (the player shifts gravity) was midway through actualisation before I realised it was just impossible as a balanced game mechanic. I just scrapped it after looking at the long term, and my project seriously improved for it. Hence, if anyone is interested enough to peer through the source code there are various vague references to a “GravDir” in the movement behaviours – just holdovers, really.

Quark

I’ve gained so much invaluable experience from this weekend alone: safe to say I’ll be attending the future Ludum Dares! Though next time, I’ll be more prepared for the challenges present. I was totally caught off guard by the workload, having given up LD22 due to work interfering I was unaware of how taxing making a game truly was. I guess I’m rather happy with the end result – it’s flawed and imperfect, but I can always fix it up later.

If you’re interested, my game’s page can be found here. I appreciate all your comments and feedback, especially negative!

After 72 hours of development (including skipping school Monday), I have finally finished by Jam entry.  You can play and rate it here.  Overall, I am very pleased with how this LD went down.  I wasn’t expecting Tiny World as the theme, so when I was looking down the theme list I neglected to pre-think of a game idea – but it didn’t really matter.  My brother, who also did the game’s soundtrack (download link on game page) helped me do a lot of brainstorming to get a good idea, think up pun-ny names for the abilities, narrow down the feature list and expand it again, and in general was a fantastic second opinion on making game design choices.  I am proud of how the game turned out.

I’ve learned a couple things:

–Happiness is intrinsic to success.  Last LD I gave up on the last day of the Jam because I was depressed and couldn’t handle the constant solitude and sitting involved with a 72-hour game jam.  I was going to do the 48-hour Compo this time for that very reason, but I went back to doing the Jam because I wanted to include my brother’s music.  Everything ended up better than last time: since he was hanging out in the office I had occupied, I wasn’t so lonely (ironic considering LD22 was Alone).  I also was oddly optimistic Saturday and Sunday.  It’s important to be happy and make a game that makes you happy – I’ve seen a lot of people now give up because they didn’t like their entry.

–The small changes make the big differences.  The difference between the finished-looking product I have now and the clearly-in-development game I had two days ago isn’t much about the features I added – it’s more about the small graphical niceties.  For instance, the background: it was just blue, but then I made an image filled with blue-ish noise.  I let you know when the camera was scrolling and, as a bonus, looked kind of like a microscope.  That similarity led Lectvs to comment that it looked thus, which gave me the idea to add the scope graphic – something that made it look even more like a microscope.  The great Notch once said the difference between a prototype and a finished game is about ten thousand particles, and that was true of this game too – particles added to the aesthetic quality.  Similarly for the change from armor being a tint to a shield-like graphic.  Small things like that, or sweeping menu transitions, make a game look professional.

–Microsoft XNA deployment is unnecessarily complicated.  I mean, seriously, Microsoft?  There’s so much stuff to customize and fit into big-budget company things where they know what they’re doing, but there’s no simple “Make a .exe out of this, kthx” button.  I hope my installer/standalone thing covers all the bases.

–It’s really easy to make something that isn’t a platformer. I went with a top-down game not only because it was what the game idea entailed, but also because there’s no collision engine.  It’s really easy to do stuff without having to worry about what happens when it hits something.  The closest I have to collision is things running a query for the closest bacterium to a position – nothing really complicated.

Short description from game page – You are a bacterium struggling to survive, thrive, and evolve. Attack other bacteria with a variety of weapons, get a variety of upgrades and buffs, and for goodness’ sake watch out for bacteriophages.

There are 2 references to kittens.  Can you find them?

Tags: kitten-challenge, ld23, postmortem, xna

So after extending what I thought would be a 48 hour jam entry to a 72 hour one, I’m done!

Angus and I are really happy with what we’ve put together, and I’d love to get as much feedback as possible on this crazy genre/medium mashup/thing that we did.

I’ll be doing postmortems, a commentary and stuff (learnt a lot of really useful stuff this time round) once I’ve slept. Coz yeah, I need sleep.

Tags: game, jam, musical, tiny world

It’s finally done! Glitches and bugs kept poping up at the last hours, so I had to sacrifice many game features and extra levels that I wanted to fit in

Overall it’s been a great experience participating on the jam! Had it not been for my girlfriend making the music and sound effects, it sure would’ve comprimised the result.  Check out the game and play it! Download TinyBot here

I’ve mostly learned that it’s pretty easy to make a game in a small amount of time if you concentrate (Kinda) and work hard (Kinda..). Sometimes bugs turn into features! Also, a lot of making a game is A) Playing your own game, or B) Messing around. That’s just what made it fun! 😀

For the next LD I might try solo, as I’ll know more. I’ve had a lot of fun and I think me and Liam did good!

On a different note, there’s a large project I’m working on called Project FOG. It’s going to be a freeroam RPG, 2D side-scrolling style. Check it out if you want! http://www.cobatrix.com/fog

Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there! Nearly there!

Million Things At Once!

And yet… Here I am, eating toast…

Newgrounds make a little help for Ludum Dare competitors.

Submit your work with “ludumdare23” tag and you will see statistics of your game. Just great!

I’m in! http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/594351

This was my first Ludum Dare and although I was unable to post my entry in time, I have learned plenty of important things to help me progress.

The reason for my failure was because I have seen to big and had too much to do in too little time. The benefits I received from this is that I learned my capabilities and I learned how fast I can really code. I still managed to have a playable 2D plat-former which included:

• physics
• map loader
• end-screen
• text
• doors & keys
• falling spikes
• spikes
• camera
• a player
• items
• traps

All of this was coded from scratch using Java with Slick2D only. In addition, I still had time to create all of the graphics, animation and levels.

In the future, I will either seek smaller, or use a bigger game engine. Here are a few snap shots of the unfinished game.

This is my first participation to this amazing contest, and I must say, it was a pretty hard yet exiting time. I set myself the objective to complete the game in 72 h starting from very very little C++ code still written by me some time ago for some basic OpenGL access.

So, I made this game Where Are You Teddy? and it is about jumping You are a girl in her dream, seeking for her teddy bear in a surreal world made of several tiny floating islands. Your only button to press is SPACE for jumping. Her size will change by the effect of small potions, and when she’s big, the ground under her feet will start crumbling!

Here’s my entry. Sorry for the few levels, it’s just to give an idea of gameplay. I had no time to made more. I’ll post more updates soon.

Thanks for reading.

This was my first LD and I think it went fairly well!

The game I created, with the help of my girlfriend Federica and my friend Dario for 2D art and game concepts, is Walker.

Walker takes place in the tiny world of the traffic signs, who are not useful anymore because of GPS.

The roadroller is coming close, so you’d better run for your life!

Here is the game!!!  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11589

What was good:

– The concept

I really liked the concept, which was an idea of Federica. It’s one of those concepts that I feel have potential but are not really investigated! Seems other people think this as well, so I’m happy with the result!

– The jam

It’s my first jam, so I was a bit anxious (let’s say terrified). Would I be able to create everything in 3 days? I am happy with the results and, frankly, I didn’t think I’d be able to debug and create a dozen levels. Working with Federica and Dario was also fun! Hurray!

– The prototyping

I used Unity and I’ve been working with it for a year and a half, so I think I’ve a good knowledge of its functionalities. The first prototype with most of the gameplay was ready the very first day! The rest was polishing and assets.

– The gameplay

I never created a platformer before, althought I’ve been playing my fair bit! It was fun to invent what the traffic signs would do and I didn’t think it would be this fun to design levels!!!!

What was bad:

– The music

I was not happy with the music, did it in so little time… I usually pay a lot of attention to the musical part of my games, but this time… too bad!

– The sounds?

I didn’t know how to do sounds and I did not want to use bsfx as was suggested beucase it sounds too electric! So we went and recorded our voices! The end result is funny, to say the least. I am content with them, tho I guess we could have done better.  Next time.

Thank you everyone, this was fun! Looking forward to play all games!!!

Michele

HIPXEL

Hello again guys…

managers and spritemaps ready…

third and final day.. the mistake

HIPXEL

credits: Luiz(Linkz), Luigi, Pedro, Fernando.

Synthesis is finished and it’s about time for a postmortem! Let’s do this!

Here’s my game’s entry page, so if you didn’t – play it & rate it:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=5431

There’s also a timelapse, if you’re interested.

What went right

I’m guilty of being a little pleased with what I’ve done during the weekend. Not in terms of a perfect game – rather in terms of my personal progress during the compo. I didn’t really like the theme, but I did manage to finish, learn a lot of new things and have a lot of fun.

• Picking Flashpunk as a library. Flashpunk is awesome. It’s very intuitive, quite well documented, and has many great features. I kinda prefer Flashpunk a little over Flixel (which I used in my last entry) because it feels more code-oriented, but I’m not that sure if this is a good thing – the best games I’ve seen so far were done in Game Maker, Multimedia Fusion, AGS, Stencyl, where the workflow seems more assets-oriented (though I admit I’ve never used any of these – probably should give them a try).
• Community help. Flashpunk tutorials (mostly those by Zachary Lewis, examples from Chevy Ray’s keynote) helped me remember stuff, and I even managed to find some preloader example on Flaspunk forums, as well as a nice Kongregate API wrapper class. Wow, Kongregate! I’ve never done that before! The community help was crucial here. Thanks to all who helped me!
• Physics. I aimed for asteroids-like movement with some friction. Attraction and repulsion mechanics seemed fairly complicated, but I spent a lot of time tweaking it, so it’s probably the best I could do with area-based meachanics. Interatomic attraction works quite fine and is even flexible enough to modify in possible future versions. I feel controls may still be too hard for many people, though – just like in my other games.
• Graphics. From the start I decided on something very simple and that was a very good idea. I did waste some time on placeholder graphics I didn’t want to use in the final game – see “things to consider” section. I think the text bubble thing – done in last few hours of development – bears a really nice effect, and I’m really glad I decided to add it. Also, particles! Wow, I did particles! I’ve never done them before!
• Sound and music. Wow, autotracker-bu is SO, SO, SO awesome and easy to use! I love that there IS freaking music in my game (without the generator tool, I couldn’t make it if my life depended on it)!
• Food. You can see it in my journal. During saturday I ate many good things – mostly because I didn’t have to prepare them myself. On sunday I just ordered pizza.

What went wrong

Besides being so horribly tired after the compo, I don’t feel that I did anything different from the last time, and this seems to be my main problem – dealing with the same issues over and over. Damn, I must try harder to do something about these next time.

• Performance. There’s a reason for having only about 20-30 atoms at most on the screen – with about 70, the game becomes unplayable due to computing too many atomic interactions. There some space for optimisation here, but I didn’t have time to think about it. Now I can just hope it works on every older machine.
• One level, hi-score based gameplay. Yeah, that’s cheap. Next time I will try to make something with a story an more than one level.
• No programming preparation. Picking AS3 without any preparation. Dammit, it’s the same mistake I did before! I don’t write in AS3 for other occasions than Ludum Dare (mostly C/C++), so it’s very painful to try and remember how that cursed variable scope works in this goddamn abomination of language! 😉
• Working without any pre-compo framework. I didn’t have anything prepared so my code looks awful – again. On the other hand, preparing too much code before the compo could mean that I’m constrained to a specific type of game… However, I feel I should do this at least once – I wonder if preparing some initial framework would make my games any better.
• No plan, no schedule. This one went actually worse than the last time, but partial knowledge of Flashpunk did save me this time. If I were to learn everything from the beginning (like I sometimes do), I would fail miserably. I think I might try to prepare some easy to edit list of “todo” things, to maintain priorities when developing a game. This time I was lucky, I guess.
• Rusty chemistry knowledge. I had to look up many chemical compounds on the web – especially their English names. I missed a few simple ones, and many complicated ones. This is also connected to the point below.
• Theme. After some brainstorming, I got some general idea for the mechanics, but during the development, it turned out that I was wrong about how chemical bonds work and had to think about some other solution. I decided on a list of possible molecules – there are 45 of them in the compo version (I will probably make another post about this).
• No coffee on Saturday and I didn’t expect that. WTF? Oh well, I had to drink tea.
• Too much coffee on Sunday. Too little sleep. I had to rest for another day just to get into some kind of shape.

Things to consider

• Placeholder graphics. I find that using simple squares isn’t enough. At least static, red or green squares, without any animations. If you’re aiming for entities with animation, you should prepare some simple graphics beforehand.
• If you think that using some game making software is lame, go and look it up. Being a programmer myself, I find that creating a polished game in 48 hours from scratch (even using a wonderful library like Flashpunk) is really hard. Not to say that using such software makes this process easier – it usually depends how innovative gameplay you want to have, and how good you know your library code. But it IS more assets-oriented and I’m tempted to try this once (especially since nowadays such tools make different platforms versions – also mobile – waaay too accessible).
• See the last round themes? Think about them BEFORE the compo! You don’t have to prepare anything – just think what you could make IF any of these themes got picked.

Okay, now it’s time to rate some games!

Tags: postmortem

Tiny World Racer

We did it – sort of! We have a playable game in which you can race your friends around the rings of Tiny Planet in LAN game.
The game will track your laps and position, and prompt you to reset when you drift off of the track.

We had to scale a lot back, but we’re pretty pleased with the result!
Until I get a host page set up, please right-click and Save As the following link:
http://www.alchemyprodigy.net/portfolio/games/worldRace/worldRaceV1.zip

We’ll be taking a well-deserved rest now. If you’d like to see the development progress, see our in-progress posts.

Sadly, I regret to say, it’s over. Some random unknown error within Monkey prevented the game’s completion. (Oh that BUG is being reported all right!)

Please join my stream tomorrow or anytime actually. (I want to play at regular schedule to get an audience to entertain.) I will play whatever I feel like (or a game a viewer picks), and I tell the story of the Ludum Dare.

MadMichaelofMetal

NRGSoft

After all those hours of work, all to have it collapse. Not to say that’s the end. I’d say this is our best work to date, and once expanded (and the bug fixed) it can be a very fun game. The curtain will not close on Tiny Octo World.

Time to sleep.

With 3 minutes to spare.

Next up: Nap-time, Transformers g1, post-mortem?

Check for yourselves!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27985155/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

 

Hi guys,

We finished Tiny World of Life!

It is available for download at https://github.com/d-snp/ludum-dare-23

You can play it at: http://tinyworld.tinco.nl

The game is our take on Conway’s game of life, with some nice audio and other fancy features!

It is built in html5 with WebGL and AudioContext. It is built for and probably only runs in Google Chrome.

Thanks for checking it out!

Our actual submission: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11765

Just uploaded the final version of Run, Unicorn, Run! It’s a big relief, but I wish we had been able to do more. The game is missing sound and UI entirely, and is more simplistic than I would have liked.

Keep an eye out for a windows port, I expect to have it available in a day or two.

The only pun-intended-title game on Ludum Dare Probably not, but hopefully the only vector game done with Unity (yeah, not Flash pfft) done for the Jam competition.

Even if it was done only by myself, in a very non-dedicated fashion as it prolly shows heh. Anyways, hope the mechanic is kinda fun, I’ll definitely try to iron out the bugs and finally bring the rocket cow into play. I also need to implement the fertilizer, etc, but it really depends on the rocket cow’s “load” to work – so yeah, pre-requisites, pre-requisites.

Sounds are all from freesounds.org plus a bit of Audacity clean up. All non-code done with Playmaker, graphics done with Illustrator and imported through RageTools. Enjoy!

http://www.freakow.com/games/HangryAnts/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

In my original build the controls were fairly unintuitive and hard to get used to. I have since updated the build to use mouse controls for gun aiming and firing (firing may still be triggered using the keyboard as well).

The new control scheme is:

A/Left – move counter-clockwise
D/Right  – move clockwise
Mouse Move – gun aiming
Left Click – fire gun
Right Click – drop charge
C – drill

The new builds may be downloaded from the following locations:

Windows | Mac OSX | Webplayer 

I’ve got my entry in at least!  So much left undone…  More time to blog later!

Find it here.

… It’s right! In the nick of time, we submitted our game for the jam! We focus heavily on the mood and artwork on this one… check it out!

(timelapse is on the way…)

P.s. Did I forget to mention that our game features what might just be the most epic cutscene in LD history?

Well, we came very close to having a beatable (if less ambitious than at first) game, but at the 72nd hour cutoff, enemies could not hurt the PC, and the PC could not hurt the boss. (the random minor enemies could be beaten, yes)

Still, posting what we had at the cutoff: HTML5 game

Object of the game: you are the ant that spawns in front of the “castle” ; fetch the sword from the first screen, then head out north to fight the bird. In futility, as we didn’t finish, but you can use your imagination we guess.

A zip of the website can be found here; note that it contains a lot of unused music and art.

We are pretty proud of the random map generator, the art and music, and the boss AI.  All three of us will probably do this again, hopefully not as restricted by real life things such as homework.

I finally finished! Just in time. I made a game about a giant called Derek. Play >DEREK<

Ludum Dare entries as of LD23

my incomplete game.

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/673150ff07b68ebd40f3b57fdb4aa174

Well Im proud to say we finally finished our first Ludum Dare. The game turned out well overall as it was the first time we had used Slick 2d, let alone Java!  We learned to think smaller, our original game plan had nearly 4 maps (Which quickly became one map with multiple levels). As a nice last minute surprise our Jar to Exe tool didn’t want to build the exe and the Windows version gave us some nice  class errors. Anyways, I got fixed up and it’s working well

.

Play the Game!

Alright we’re finally finally finished with our entry for the Jam, Sword of Altaria. It was a lot harder to make than I thought, but I learned a lot and had a lot of fun.

You can play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=3824

Hi all! Here’s our entry for the jam. If you are lucky enough as to be able to compile it (let alone run it), then that’s awesome. If not, then we definitely know what to work on next time!

http://ludumdurr.tumblr.com/post/21685742909/source-is-up

Well, we finished. Barely. With 5 minutes to go I was making a build and realized there was no game icon so I quickly let my artist know, she tossed one in the dropbox, and the build finished with two minutes before the deadline. Our finished game is called “Aqua Wars”.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE GAME!

WHAT WENT RIGHT?

The art. The artist for our group was Kiki Snell and I usually have her doing the art for me whenever I do game jams. She did a great job and threw together this awesome little timelapse video to show her progress…
http://youtu.be/vRduXqTZ3CA

WHAT WENT WRONG?

It took far to long for us to figure our our idea and gameplay. I had a few ideas for some of the themes but wasn’t expecting Tiny World to win. We kind of came up with a rough plan and fleshed it out as we went along. With past game jams I’ve had more time to focus but I was gone from my house until Sunday afternoon and was just able to do a little bit of coding with my laptop. Once I was home on Sunday we made a lot of progress but then I had work all day Monday and only a few hours to make any finishing touches. The next time I plan on taking off time from work and putting aside the entire weekend to completely devote it to making a better entry.

We started tossing ideas around as soon as the theme was announced and had an idea for making a city building sim type game but base around a microscopic Sea Monkey type creature. That idea didn’t really stick for long but we had already gotten a decent amount of art for an aquarium type setting so we kept going in that route. For the first 24 hours we didn’t really have much down as far as gameplay went. We thought maybe something like a Tamagotchi where you would just care for the fish, but that sounded more like an interactive screensaver and we wanted something a bit more fun. We ended up turning the assets we had into a sort of tower defense type game. You guide a small school of fish around, clicking other types of fish that appear to attack them, and buy more fish, feed your fish, and buy plants for the aquarium. I’m not sure I’d really call our game a success, even though we finished I think we could have done something better…

Tags: 2D, final, ld23, post-mortem, postmortem, screenshot, timelapse, unity3d

I’d like to introduce a Ludum Dare jam game I created along with Justin Nafziger and Cole Wardell called Anticolor.

It is a puzzle game about making opposite-colored orbs work in unity. Orbs can only exist in their opposite-color space, and they leave a wake of their own color behind them that allows the passage of orbs of the opposite color.

The controls and general smoothness could use some work, but I’m thrilled with the amount we got done in 48 hours.

Here is a link to our entry and download.

Enjoy
-Ty

Okay so, we just submitted our game, and I think it would be an understatement to say we basically KILLED ourselves working on this.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11521

50 hours straight of work, along with getting a very bad fever and having to pour cold water on my head every few hours otherwise I get extremely dizzy. Oh and did I mention, the power cut in the final hour…

But with my trusty laptop and hotspot equipped iPhone, we managed to give birth to this very, very heavy but beautiful baby.

Art and animation by Xelu. www.xelubest.com

We’ve done an *insane* amount of work for this game. I think the artist will most likely be getting carpal tunnel after this 😛

Please give it a go and tell us what you think!

~Omar Shehata

This is absolutely freaking me out! As there are some couple minutes left, I try to submit my game. But it’s not working. What’s exactly going on here?

Tiny the Dust Bunny – Tiny’s World

All I can say is… whoooo…. boy…

We did it! We did it! Yay!!
Serious pat on the back for Jimun for keeping the project together and making things work!

This is our first completion as a team in the LD Jam.